Previews

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One

Activision's hugely popular WWII series returns to consoles, but not without some major changes.

Spiffy:

Focus on a single character allows for greater storytelling; land, sea, and air missions provide more variety; still plenty of large-scale battles.

Iffy:

We don't really know anything about the multiplayer side of things; will the game still look and feel like a CoD title?

According to many fans of World War II first-person shooters, there are two types of games in the genre: Call of Duty and everything else. Activision's popular series exploded onto the PC gaming scene a few years ago, and gamers everywhere were swept up in the cinematic intensity it provided, virtually throwing them onto the battlefield.

When the first console title, Call of Duty: Finest Hour, was released last year, reviews were mixed, as many felt that the game just didn't offer the same experience. Sure, you still participated in chaotic, large-scale battles, but there was just something missing. Still, the game sold well, so it wasn't surprising that Activision decided to make a sequel. This time out, however it wanted to ensure that everyone got what they wanted.

Call of Duty 2: Big Red One tells the tale of the famed Fighting First, one of the divisions that was involved in many of the pivotal battles of the war. The First had been around since The Big One (also known as World War I), but they really made their mark in the second great war. The men in the division liked to say that "the First was the first," and they weren't merely blowing smoke. The division was involved in some of the war's most important operations (including Torch and Overlord), and they were among the first wave of soldiers to step foot on Omaha Beach and the North African front. These men were warriors in every sense of the word, and Activision knew that their story was perfect for the medium of video games.

Unlike the previous games, which placed you in the combat boots of soldiers from different countries, Big Red One's story is presented from the point of view of a single member of the division. This was partially in response to the feedback the company heard from fans who were interested in seeing more of a focus on narrative storytelling, and wanted to get to know the characters that were presented. Of course, since the division was involved in so many battles on many different fronts, this made the task quite a bit easier. You'll still be hopping around from France to North Africa and Germany, but you'll be doing it in the context of the main story, which takes place over the course of three long years.